Rosemary Norwood MR
YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE LEADING ROLE IN 25TH JACKEYS MARSH FOREST FESTIVAL
From 1 – 3 February 2008 the Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival will celebrate 25 years of forest conservation in the valley of Jackeys Marsh.
The 2008 Festival is special because many of those taking leading roles in this festival attended as children at previous festivals back as far as 1983.
Heavy metal band Zero Degrees Freedom, playing on Saturday night features drummer, Linton Tuleja, 21, who grew up in Meander and attended many festivals as a child. His father Ed has played at previous festivals. Zero Degrees Freedom describes itself as the sound of darkness put to music. Lyrical investigations of internal conflict set to a soundtrack of weeping melody, crushing rhythm and grand orchestral sound-scapes.
Ed Tuleja also plays at this festival along with Conor Breen 25, another former Meander resident and her father, Damian. Both families have a fine tradition of delighting audiences in Tasmania and beyond.
Other young performers at this festival who were attendees as children are Liam Pennicott and Joel Hallam. Joel’s metal band, This Future Chaos, has a popular following in Launceston and is likely to bring more young people out to experience the natural forest environments that surround Jackeys Marsh.
With a more environmental focus, wilderness photographer Jade Hallam, 25 will show her photographs, and science graduates Nina Cadman, 28 and Micah Visiou, 30 will take walks. Both Nina and Micah ( recently returned from England working as botanist at the Kew gardens ) were at the very first Forest Festival in 1983.
25 YEAR CELEBRATION
Festival Artistic Director, Niecy Brown, has put together a ceremonial celebration through dance, visual art and music. The performance, WOMEN WITH WINGS, is inspired by the elements Earth, Water, Fire and Wind that have shaped the landscape and environment of the Marsh. The work is a collaboration between acclaimed musicians, The Chordwainers playing leather instruments made by Gary Greenwood, dance company Women of Whimsy, choreographed by Fiona Reilly with costumes designed and made by artist Lucinda Hunnam and visual art elements from Niecy Brown. Community artists collected local materials transformed them into paper to make large bird puppets to form part of the ceremony at 5pm on Saturday 2nd Feb. This project was supported by Tas. Regional Arts – Community Partnerships Program and Arts Deloraine.
Launceston based Arts Alive artists Ralf Hartel, Rob Duffield, Laura McKew, Viki West, Christine Norton, Jo Anglesea and Marty Cole are supporting showing installations in and around the festival site.
FROM AROUND THE WORLD
People have come back to Jackeys Marsh from across Australia and around the world to be part of the 2008 Festival. Jenny Edlington from Canada has returned for her second festival and has built a wood fired bread oven. This year’s festival menu is based around fresh Turkish bread pizza and salads. She will be assisted by Sandy Shea who has returned from California after enjoying last year’s festival so much.
Lisa Yeates will return from northen NSW to perform and compere the concert on Saturday night. Lisa was a standout performer at the first festival in 1983 and currently performs on the Gold Coast. She is now nationally recognised as a driving force in environmental activism with a wealth of political and protest tales, songs and images that are sure reach into your heart to both educate and entertain.
Assisting with the organization of the festival are young people from Denmark, Germany, France, Holland, Korea and many other countries. These young people travel as Wwoofer’s and enjoy the hospitality of the locals in return for their assistance with site construction and maintenance. Such young travelers help to spread the work about the importance of the Tasmanian forests to the world’s future.
FOREST CONSERVATION
The forests of Jackeys Marsh and the Great Western Tiers are very important for their high levels of biodiversity, their landscape values and for the carbon that they store. A special workshop at this festival will discuss new research which identifies forests such as those in Tasmania as highly significant carbon stores which need to be maintained. Government’s can no longer afford to ignore the imperative to protect these carbon stores to avoid further climate destabilization.
www.forestfestival.org
